


Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)

by 2amEuphoria



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brightwell, Comfort/Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Medication, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Protective Dani Powell, References to Depression, Side Effects, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23859496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2amEuphoria/pseuds/2amEuphoria
Summary: “I don’t feel much of anything.Anything,Dani.”If her ribs can just cage up the sob that’s brewing inside her, just for a bit longer-_Malcolm's mental illnesses get the better of him sometimes. Luckily, he isn't alone. He never will be.Please mind the tags for trigger and content warnings.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 7
Kudos: 62





	Death Bed (Coffee for Your Head)

**Author's Note:**

> What do you do when you’re having a bad mental health day? Write about a fictional character’s bad mental health day, of course.
> 
> Please mind the trigger and content warnings.
> 
> Please remember that certain antidepressants work for some people and are ineffective, if not detrimental to others. This is not to discourage people from using antidepressants, including the medications mentioned. Sometimes it’s a “dance,” trying to find what works for you. This is not meant to be considered as medical or medication advice.
> 
> Inspired by the song "Death Bed (Coffee for your Head)" by Powfu ft. beabadoobee

“I’m so sorry, Dani.”

She hears his nails claw against the threads of the bedsheets. 

“Sorry for what?” She replies behind the kitchen island. She can only guess what he might say, though he shouldn't have to.

_"For throwing up all day, making you carry me like a wounded soldier in and out of the bathroom. For laying on your side of the bed, because it smells like you and that comforts me. For you having to butter toast for me at 10:00 at night."_

“For everything.” Even from a distance, she notices the wet glaze over his eyes, the tears that are threatening to break once more.

She sighs, laying the knife against the edge of the plate. Her eyes feel tender, the skin swollen and tired. She silently hopes he hasn’t put two and two together, that he hasn’t realized she’d locked herself in the bathroom to cry after he’d fallen asleep earlier that afternoon. Her face hasn’t seemed to recover, even if the red has disappeared from her eyes, her cheeks.

She straightens up, as if her spine will somehow keep her thoughts steady as well, and her gaze turns to him.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, love.” She offers him a smile, even if it’s bullshit. Maybe he’s so zoinked out that he won’t be able to deduce that. 

She picks up the plate, trying not to flinch when the knife slides off and clatters onto the marble countertop. She continues to try, as her legs move her forward to his side. Continues to try, as she fights the mist in her eyes when he looks up at her and his face melts, a shelter dog seeing the person that was coming to take him home.

Dani sets the plate on his bedside table, a test to see if he’ll pick himself off the bed to reach for it. After a pregnant pause, he does, army-crawling across the sheets to reach for a crumbling piece of toast. Maybe the groan of the mattress as she sinks onto the bed beside him has hidden the simultaneous, audible sigh she produces in response to his efforts. She hopes so.

“Dani,” he mumbles, specks of bread collecting on the sheets around them. He peers up with her with a face that forces her to swallow hard. “I’m numb.”

“You’ve been telling me that.” He leans his cheek against her palm as she toys with his hair, but she knows he’s not completely soothed. He’s not done.

“I don’t feel much of anything. _Anything,_ Dani.”

If her ribs can just cage up the sob that’s brewing inside her, just for a bit longer-

“Dani.” His tone begs for her to look at him. She brings her eyes off the headboard and onto the man she’s only been dating for three months, the man she loves. The man who now looks like he’s not a day over six years old rather than thirty.

“I’m sorry, Dani. I’m sorry you have to watch me go.”

The sob can sit in her lungs for a bit longer; depression is hard for her to watch, but faulty logic? _That_ she can handle. She clicks her tongue, shaking her head at him as she tucks stray hairs behind his ear.

“You’re not dying, Malcolm,” she adopts the tone she once used to soothe her sister after a nightmare. “You’re feeling depressed. But you’re going to be just _fine.”_

She hears the cogwheels turning in his head, breaking through built-up rust and doubt. He concentrates on the final bite of toast in front of him, eyebrows intermittently furrowed. She rubs her thumb across his cheek a final time before leaving to get him some water.

He's been feeling off for a couple days, but his thoughts have gone from sluggish to catastrophic within the last 24 hours. From “I just don’t feel like it” when he wouldn’t laugh at her jokes to “something’s wrong, should we go to the hospital?” At first his mindset terrified her, and she nearly complied with his request, eyeing her car keys last night whenever she wasn’t watching his chest rise and fall beside her. Today, though, she’d found the office note from his psychiatrist at his desk, and observed the text that the doctor highlighted fervently at the bottom of the page:

_“IF YOU EXPERIENCE ANY DRASTIC CHANGES IN YOUR THOUGHTS, ACTIONS OR BEHAVIOR (SUICIDAL IDEATION/PLANNING, WORSENING ANXIETY/DEPRESSION, APATHY, OR OTHER SYMPTOMS THAT CONCERN YOU, DO NOT HESITATE TO CALL THE OFFICE.”_

“Dani?” She’s pulled from her thoughts by his whimpering. “I... I hope you find someone who loves you. Who loves you more than I did.” His voice lacks any prosody, any intention, but the content, his _words_ make her eyes sting. “I’m sorry I took up so much of your time... Only for you to lose me like this. I should’ve never pulled you under here with me... in the first place.” His chin falls back onto the mattress, and a hand that almost grabbed another piece of toast droops off of the bed.

Could his meds actually be killing him? _No,_ she scolds herself, _don’t go there. You’ve spent enough time on the internet today, you’d know what to look for._

“While I always appreciate you saying you love me,” Dani calls back to him from the island, getting a straw for his cup of water, “I’m not going anywhere, you silly goose.” Any other instance and her tone would be playful; now it’s tempered, serious. “And neither are you, by the way.” She pads back over to him, her toes curling with each step on the cold hardwood floor.

“But Dani,” his drawling begins to rise in pitch, desperate for her to understand him. “I’m not going to survive this; I’m, I’m-”

“You’re going off of Paxil as soon as I call your psychiatrist in the morning, and going back on Zoloft.” She’s grateful that she can finally say this. They’ve had a long day- a long couple of days, actually, that have finally come to a head. But this is going to be the end of it, she’s decided. Tomorrow will be Monday, and the office will open at 9a.m., and she’ll call. They’ve almost made it through the weekend, she just needs to pull them through tonight.

Taking in the lethargic, feeble man before her, she silently curses his doctor’s thinking. Paxil was a recommendation after he expressed “not feeling better, not feeling worse” from the Zoloft. And perhaps it could work for him, but not when he’d started taking it after only two weeks of tapering off the first medication. It’s only been a week and a half now that he’s been on Paxil alone, but she wonders if he’s still going through withdrawal from one drug while getting acclimated (or not, considering the nausea and sudden apathy) to another. She’s not a doctor, so she’s always tried to respect anyone who’s cared for him. However, as a former addict, she knows it takes far longer for the body to shirk itself of drugs than anyone with a medical degree but no lived experience may realize.

Maybe she’s wrong and the doctor’s right. Maybe this was a good time to switch. Maybe these side effects will wear off in a couple days. Maybe they’ll wear off in the morning, and she’ll wake up to him bouncing off the walls and chomping down Twizzlers and sharing his latest theory on the unsolved Hinterkaifeck murders. 

But for now, while the only reason he’s picking his head off the bed is because of her presence in front of him, this is enough. His side effects are giving _her_ side effects. _“Talk to your boyfriend’s doctor if you are experiencing fatigue, uncontrollable thoughts of whether you’re being the best partner you can be, or cathartic crying fits alone in the shower.”_

She only takes her hand off the glass when his fingers curl around it. Dani watches him take slow, small sips, until he puts the now-empty glass onto the bedside table and sinking his head back onto the bed. His eyes close, but she doubts that he’ll be asleep within the next few minutes, let alone the next few hours.

The toast she made is growing more stale by the minute, but she leaves it where it is, hopeful that he’ll sneak a piece in the middle of the night. She’ll never be more thrilled to wake up to the sound of him chewing next to her ear. The only change she makes to his bedside setup is a refilled glass of water, just in case. She knows he’d hesitate to try it, worried about hitting a threshold and having to retch again. Dani pulls a trash can flush against the edge of the mattress by his head and a Post-It note next to the glass: _“Try some more. Wake me if you get sick-trash right next to you. It’s okay, I promise.”_

She settles back onto the bed, this time leaning over to cover his body with hers. Her chin rests on his shoulder, her legs tangle with his as best she can on top of the comforter. One hand envelops his, the other reaching over and under to cradle his head with her palm and tease his hair with her fingertips.

She’ll probably get cold at some point during the night like this. She probably should’ve shut the kitchen lights off beforehand. She might tumble off the edge of the bed with the way she’s precariously perched, if he doesn’t buck her off from a night terror before then.

Instead of and in spite of all of this, she sings to him.

_“Don't stay awake for too long,_   
_Don't go to bed._   
_I'll make a cup of coffee for your head;_   
_I'll get you up and going out of bed...”_


End file.
